Siege of Orgrimmar Raid Schedule
Don't forget that Siege of Orgrimmar Flex Wing 4 opens this week! The final Raid Finder wing will open next week.

With Garrosh being available on Flex, you can start trying for the Heirloom weapons. Remember that the first one in each difficulty will be for your current loot spec, but after that they will be random.

Deathwing has been unleashed! Beginning today, October 15, players are able to get the original World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm for only $19.99 as part of the newly upgraded World of Warcraft package (formerly known as the Battle Chest). In addition, all World of Warcraft subscribers now automatically have access to all of the content and features of these expansions at no additional cost.

With these changes, we’re making it easier than ever for new players to begin their epic adventures in Azeroth and join in on the fun.

Quick update: several of you have expressed a concern about stealth teams staying hidden until late in the game, when Dampening starts to stack. This would require them to grab Shadow Sight orbs as much as possible, which would be tricky but is actually possible (particularly with mechanics like Vanish).

We're not totally sure it would be a problem, as it would require quite a bit of skill and more than a little luck to pull off, but we do see the concern and want to avoid promoting that sort of behavior. So, when the Dampening change goes in, we'll also be changing the Shadow Sight debuff to prevent the player who picks up the orb from using stealth mechanics while it's active. That will also include abilities like Vanish or Shadowmeld.

Mechanic Scaling in Flex Raids
Does your Flex group try to keep a certain size to avoid some mechanics? Let us know your group's magic number in the comments!

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Some people have worked out that there are specific break points for specific mechanics of some bosses that change the makeup of the fight. It isn't consistent though from boss to boss, and so no there's no magic number.

Ultimately if you're trying to min/max Flex by not inviting more people that want to go and who would help build a successful team, you're overthinking it.

So if you're trying to maximize your game time by minimizing your time spent in a flex raid that's overthinking it? How do you feel about the rest of theorycrafting?
Some people are going to try to min/max everything because they find efficiency fun. But the intent of Flex is to offer a low stress option for guilds and friends to progress through content without rigid requirements to show up/sit out to maintain a number of participants. Similarly we like that people can PUG it and find some success in a managed group setting. Feel free to ignore the intent of the feature, but my response is still going to be that limiting yourself to some specific number of people is not required to have a successful run, and can be detrimental to the types of people and raid groups that the feature is directly intended for.

If a raid leader is attempting to build a rigid group to attempt Flex and is telling members of his own 25 Normal team to sit out because some lower number is optimal, that person is overthinking it. If someone is building a Flex PUG and is turning down skilled and geared players because of an optimal number he read somewhere, he's overthinking it. It's Flex, let's not pretend you're world first raiding here.

Right now there are some assumptions being made about mechanical breakpoints in Flex, but there are also some valid concerns. The orbs on Norushen for example may need tweaking.

What would be super helpful is if people have examples of breakpoints they think limit them to having a certain number of people, and what those are. It's in everyone's best interests to be able to invite whoever they want, and not feel like they're limited to some number because of mechanic scaling.

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Flex RaidingGreg, any thoughts on making Flex loot tradeable in guild groups? Got a few items I wish had gone elsewhere. Thanks!that is an utterly fascinating technical problem
We have a long-term solution we like. Just need to see if we can get it built. (Source)

What is the reason that Flex raids have their own ilvl and difficulty? It increases ilvl bloat and feels unfair.
Unfair to whom? LFR players? It is much harder than LFR (minus the social issues). (Source)

now apparently it's more popular than normal what happened?
My hunch is it roped in a lot of groups that were doing LFR but not enjoying it, or maybe folks that had given up raiding. (Source)

What's the min ilvl and max for Flex ? Because I always see people asking for 525+ ilvl.
There is no min or max level, but in my experience, true pugs are ridiculously wary of failure. (Source)

PvEOverall, how happy are you guys with Challenge Modes? Anything you'd have done differently, or maybe add more 5mans?
Very happy overall. One change we would make is that you don't get the best rewards unless you beat all of them. (Source)
That decision made sense since the armor is kind of goofy to wear piecemeal, but the feeling still persists. (Source)
We also understand that it doesn't scratch the challenging heroic itch for all players because of the speed emphasis. (Source)

Agree completely. Sure, speed is one way to add challenge, but like you said.. I just prefer it to be more difficult.

Heroic dungeons = LFR
Challenge mode = Raiding

It should require planning, teamwork, CC and doing mechanisms correctly.

Let's just forget enrage timers and stacking mechanics are always there to avoid cheesing the fights...
Time is always a big factor in challenging content, and a faster kill is always an easier kill. ALWAYS.

"Remember that the first one in each difficulty will be for your current loot spec, but after that they will be random."

A big fuck you to dual wield classes.

"Beginning today, October 15, players are able to get the original World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm for only $19.99 as part of the newly upgraded World of Warcraft package"

What is the fucking point of that? They shut down raf.

As for challenge modes. I'd prefer them to be harder with no time emphasis. Being forced to blaze through them is hugely annoying. I'd prefer tactics, cc, setting things up, no invis pots etc.

Well there's no actual challenge in the challenge mode without the timer. I mean, go in without stomping everything, take your time to ress dead people,CC dangerous trash, wait for the healer to drink when oom, and you still get a silver medal easily.
Same goes with proving gorunds, it's a joke if you have all the time in the world...

I think you either forget or weren't around for TBC Heroic Dungeons. No timers, hard as hell, super fun. Every role had to take responsibility for their actions. As a DPS if you pulled aggro off the tank, you were one-shotted. You had to organize tactics for packs of trash, know which to CC and perfect the kill order. The slightest mistakes and your group wiped. Going into them, wipes were expected. I can't speak for other players, but I was hoping Challenge Modes were a return that kind of gameplay. The timer made it a zerg-fest instead.

I think you either forget or weren't around for TBC Heroic Dungeons. No timers, hard as hell, super fun. Every role had to take responsibility for their actions. As a DPS if you pulled aggro off the tank, you were one-shotted. You had to organize tactics for packs of trash, know which to CC and perfect the kill order. The slightest mistakes and your group wiped. Going into them, wipes were expected. I can't speak for other players, but I was hoping Challenge Modes were a return that kind of gameplay. The timer made it a zerg-fest instead.

I'm pretty sure that if you give TBC style dungeons to the current playerbase you'll have a "OMG too eeez" fest on day 2.
I'm not saying it was easy, I'm saying the game and the players are not the same anymore. TBC heroics were hard moslty because people needed to figure out how to use their class properly, and where the hard trashes were... and most of them had no clue.
You can get the same exact feeling running a challenge with a group that has never done a challenge before. You won't even get a bronze on the first try.

. TBC heroics were hard moslty because people needed to figure out how to use their class properly, and where the hard trashes were

I agree. Sure TBC heroics were harder than the current ones, but not by a lot. Like ^ says a lot of it is just the player base is overall more skilled. My first heroics were as priest when I didn't know about spell ranks or mana efficiency at all. I was able to roll face heal my way through most of all of them.

"Remember that the first one in each difficulty will be for your current loot spec, but after that they will be random."

A big fuck you to dual wield classes.

"Beginning today, October 15, players are able to get the original World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm for only $19.99 as part of the newly upgraded World of Warcraft package"

What is the fucking point of that? They shut down raf.

As for challenge modes. I'd prefer them to be harder with no time emphasis. Being forced to blaze through them is hugely annoying. I'd prefer tactics, cc, setting things up, no invis pots etc.

You must be a lot of fun at parties Negative Nancy.

Also come out of your cave much? See all the news about the new RAF mount?

I agree. Sure TBC heroics were harder than the current ones, but not by a lot. Like ^ says a lot of it is just the player base is overall more skilled. My first heroics were as priest when I didn't know about spell ranks or mana efficiency at all. I was able to roll face heal my way through most of all of them.

Everyone is assuredly entitled to their opinion, and I respect yours. Mine however, is that you are objectively wrong. The mechanics of fights in dungeons nowadays are a joke. While many of them are far more complicated than ever before, the penalty for failing to perform that complicated mechanic is often negligible. Things rarely get more difficult than, 'dont stand in that bad stuff on the ground' 'kill those mobs when they spawn' as far as IMPORTANT mechanics go.

Things WERE harder in TBC, it's not nostalgia (I actually think it was too hard at points), it's not a 'we are better at WoW now' thing. It's just fact. If you really played during TBC you remember Shattered Halls and how many groups never even finished it. Often a group would entirely break up and quit, that nearly NEVER happens in any dungeon now. How about Magister's Terrace? Until a week before Wrath hit, more groups couldn't get past the 'arena' boss than could, one mistake, one person not keeping their target CC'd or interrupting a heal could lose the fight entirely. The TK dungeons were tougher early on as well. Mists at no point ever offered the challenges that BC offered even late into the expansion. The difficulty scale for dungeons goes as follows (excluding vanilla because it went through too many changes to accurately gauge) from 1 (hardest) to 4 (easiest)

1) TBC
2) Cataclysm
3) MoP
4) Wrath

This is dungeons only, raids are too varied as well to accurately depict, many expansions had raids that were a joke and raids that were insanely hard at points, so you'd have to go into the list further than just xpac.

Agree completely. Sure, speed is one way to add challenge, but like you said.. I just prefer it to be more difficult.

Heroic dungeons = LFR
Challenge mode = Raiding

It should require planning, teamwork, CC and doing mechanisms correctly.

- - - Updated - - -

They are heirlooms for the NEXT expansion.. not for old content. They will scale up to level 100.

Basically you will get your heirloom, but continue using your heroic SoO weapon this expansion.. Next expansion, maybe level 91 or 92, your heirloom weapon will be an upgrade over your SoO weapon and then you can use that heirloom all the way to 100. ( since the heirlooms scale to 100, it is a good bet the next expansion will take us to 100)

I agree, cheesing mechanics with pots remove the challenge for me. I refuse to do it until that's not a thing.

lol at tbc dungeons. they were great. mechanics were very unforgiving and it was not uncommon for people to die frequently during trash pulls and bosses that took multiple attempts.

i think the closest thing we've come to TBC in terms of difficulty were the dungeons that started with cata (prior to extreme nerfing). even then, they weren't as difficult. tbc dungeons required concentration, timing, execution, good intuition/judgement and each of those had to be done reliably on every pull.

i truly don't remember vanilla dungeons being very difficult. initially, some of them were buggy but you were able to put more than 5 people into regular 5 mans, so aside from mobs hitting you from underneath walls and things like that they weren't very difficult.

I agree. Sure TBC heroics were harder than the current ones, but not by a lot.

I'd say only a handful of the TBC Heroics were actually geniunely hard. Some were pretty darn faceroll.

Infact, the main reason Shattered Halls was hard was due to the large packs of trash and the 4 target limit on Thunderclap (since Warriors were the main tanking class then). Made holding aggro kinda hard. And double casters, but that's what CC was for.

Bring a Paladin, problem solved. But good luck finding any since no-one wanted them for the majority of raids.

Regardless, I'd like to see the timed element only apply to the bosses and not the trash in Challenge Modes. Maybe just give them brutal enrage timers? Then just get rid of those scoreboards because quite honestly who really cared about them after the first few weeks?

I'm actually more interested in level scalling dungeons. Do any damn dungeon you want at a challenging difficulty.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by deceptacon1

lol at tbc dungeons. they were great. mechanics were very unforgiving and it was not uncommon for people to die frequently during trash pulls and bosses that took multiple attempts.

Overtuned, quite honestly. Some of those dungeons were more deadly then Karazhan before they were nerfed. I'm glad Blizzard refined their balancing skills.

I'm pretty sure that if you give TBC style dungeons to the current playerbase you'll have a "OMG too eeez" fest on day 2.
I'm not saying it was easy, I'm saying the game and the players are not the same anymore. TBC heroics were hard moslty because people needed to figure out how to use their class properly, and where the hard trashes were... and most of them had no clue.
You can get the same exact feeling running a challenge with a group that has never done a challenge before. You won't even get a bronze on the first try.

I'm not so sure, I've NEVER seen any form of CC used at all in MoP Heroics, ever, in fact I don't think i've ever seen any sort of tactic used for anything or anywhere in Heroics, literal AoE and tunnel boss orgy.

CC was needed in TBC heroics, when you had a mage in your party it was happy days.

People get better over time yes, but the game has been made much easier by both dumbing down of some areas, and leveling the playing field in other areas such as raid wide buffs and party comp being meaningless and so on and so forth.

I disagree that "People didn't know how to play their class properly" in TBC and it took them three more expansions until they finally worked out how to play their character, that's kind of ridiculous.

It's hard to say, too many variables.

"You won't even get a bronze on the first try." Good, a challenge shouldn't be one shot the first time.

Decent deal on the battle chest, I'd possibly do it for RaF'ing myself if it wasn't currently shut.

I love they added heirloom weapons for the "final" encounter, it's the literal answer to "All my epics get replaced with greens straight away!11", and I'm glad they aren't on LFR, a lot of people will end up with them regardless due to Flex over the coming months, ahh hurry Blizzcon.

So, with cata being less costing, and part of the battle chest, can us people who bought the cata, and of when pandaria comes out during the next Xpac *most likely* can we get some kind of balance onto our battle.net balance? This may start alot of controversy but...AGREE WITH MEH START A THREAD! GET YO MOUNTS/ MOG HELMET!!!